


Probably

by Dhillarearen



Category: Pellinor - Alison Croggon, The Bone Queen, The Books of Pellinor
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Post-The Bone Queen, Pre-The Naming, is 'comfortable pining' a thing bc that's...kind of what this is?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 15:19:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13954395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dhillarearen/pseuds/Dhillarearen
Summary: Dernhil is leaving for Innail. Cadvan was not expecting this.





	Probably

Dernhil sighed and pushed a stack of papers across his desk. The corner of his nail caught against an old scuff in the burnished wood, digging it imperceptibly deeper. Dernhil examined it with melancholy fondness as he picked the splinter from his finger. This desk had been his since his childhood. He had learned his letters on its gently sloping surface, his feet then dangling above the floor they rested easily on now. He had penned countless missives, scholarly pages, and fledgeling attempts at the more imaginative side of wordcraft sitting just as he was now, with his elbows propped upon it and his inkwell before him. Anhil was wont to tease him that, between his desk and the dinner table, Dernhil would stand up one day and find his legs had flattened out from sitting.

At this last thought Dernhil let go his finger and rested his forehead on his closed fist. It was not truly his desk that he would miss when he left, he knew. Having his family near was a joy he had left behind to go to the School in Lirigon, and it was the twice-loss of that comfort that he would feel the most keenly, now that he knew what it was to be without. Birdnews and letters were never as good as the silent support of a hand upon a shoulder, or the simple familiarity of refilling another’s cup of wine.

There was a step outside his door, and then it was flung open carelessly, as if by a gust of wind. Dernhil raised his head, unstartled. It was yet in his Knowing who was on the other side even at the moment of their entrance, as if he had been expecting his visitor, though he was not. He wondered, not for the first time, at Cadvan being able to appear perfectly suited in houses scarce bigger than a covered wagon, and yet batter against the much wider walls of a School like an animal that had outgrown its pen. Cadvan prided himself on being able to disappear into the wilds whenever he wished, and it was not untrue: yet inside of a School he blew through rooms as if he were himself a storm, catching the eye of those who watched him—and especially those who knew him—in the magnetic pull of his gyre.

Cadvan now looked distressed, his angular face pinched around his eyes and mouth.His hair was wet, darkening the collar of his shirt; he must have come direct from the bathhouse. Dernhil met his eyes and, deliberately, smiled.

“Why is it always that you are the one coming and going, and it is us that stay still and await your presence?” Dernhil asked, standing. He strode forward and clasped Cadvan’s hand, and then embraced him warmly. “I have missed you, my friend.”

Cadvan returned Dernhil’s embrace tightly. He smelled of the evening air, the deep freshness ofthe edge of night and, at this time of year, the sweetness of bruised petals. “Yet it is now my turn to play the opposite part, if gossip does not deceive, as it so often does,” Cadvan said, stepping back, though he still held Dernhil’s upper arms. “Tell me, is it true you go to Innail? I thought to stay in Gent awhiles, but I would rather travel with you there than remain after you have gone, and save my rest for your company.”

“It is true,” Dernhil confirmed, and Cadvan’s hands tightened a moment on his arms. Dernhil drew him more fully inside and closed the door behind them. For Cadvan to forget and leave it open spoke more to his upset than his appearance. “Forgive me for not telling you. I knew not where to find you, and thought to ask at Innail if there was news of you to give you notice.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” said Cadvan. At last he smiled, though his eyes did not relax. 

Dernhil extricated himself from Cadvan’s grasp and went to the cupboard, returning with two cups and a bottle of wine. “Here,” he said, pouring and offering one of the cups to Cadvan. “It is a good vintage, not too sweet. I have been gifted many fine things of late, and I know not whether they are to see me off or to convince me to stay.” He fingered the stem of his own cup while Cadvan drank. Cadvan’s manner was worrying him. “Is there some misgiving you have against it? Do you have some knowledge, or some feeling, that speaks ill of this path?” It would be a sore choice, to lose the position he had been offered in Innail, and the access to the libraries of the School, where there were several texts he had long been wanting to study; but Dernhil would trust Cadvan if he had some foreboding. Dernhil shook his head inwardly at himself. His family and friends had tried in vain to coax him into remaining in Gent, yet one word from Cadvan would be sufficient. Was it Cadvan himself that had such power to change people’s minds, or was it Dernhil’s response to Cadvan? Dernhil’s sense said that it was a little of both.

“No misgiving,” said Cadvan. He hesitated. “None besides that of my heart, but in a selfish sense only. I confess I have looked these past months to put down my pack and pass the time easy with you in the School here. I have, as you say, unfairly attributed to you a kind of landing, where I may return to dock my ship at will. I am glad that you go to Innail, truly. It is a good School, and I see in your face that settling there will make you happy.” Cadvan toasted Dernhil with his cup and took another sip, his wet tangles sliding across his cheek and leaving streaks of water. Even rumpled and petulant, Cadvan was handsome, Dernhil noted without pique. He tossed Cadvan one of the napkins folded beside the wine and made a scrubbing motion over his hair when Cadvan stared at it nonplussed.

“Ah,” said Cadvan, with the first breath of a laugh. “So here I’ve come in, thrown a tantrum about you leaving, and dripped all over your floor.” He drew the napkin over his head, setting his wine down on the windowsill, and began roughly drying his hair. “I see gossip has indeed stretched the truth. I was given to believe you were at this moment walking out the door.” 

“I would be a sorry traveler if that were my state,” Dernhil said, sweeping a hand over the half-packed disarray of his rooms. “Tomorrow is when I plan to leave. You are welcome to come with me, though I may not be up to the pace you would prefer.”

“That I would appreciate,” said Cadvan, his voice muffled under the napkin. “Traveling alone has its merits, but there is much enjoyment in traveling with a friend. I would warn you that I am no easy road-companion either, but by now I am sure you know.” He flipped up the napkin and shared a wry glance with Dernhil. 

An emotion that Dernhil knew by now well surged within him, warming him from his chest down to his toes. And to think, he thought, that I once wondered at how staunchly Cadvan was loved. “You can walk beside the horses, and take a turn carrying me upon your back,” he teased. “Or would you rather a saddlebag? That might teach you to go at a mere mortal’s pace, and keep you from flitting off into the sky to join the birds when nobody’s watching.”  
  
“It’s an old charm,” said Cadvan gravely. “I found it under a rock painted green, that spoke to me in a voice full of feathers.”  
  
“Of course. Did the voice spare a couple feathers for your bedroll, or is that still painfully thin?”  
  
“All bedrolls are thin over hard roots. I sleep in the trees now, and only come down to hunt mushrooms.”

“ _Pity you the fire-red robin, with his home upon the bough,_ ” Dernhil chanted, beginning a children’s rhyme in which a foolish robin forsook hen after hen for the elusive wiles of a robin-shaped toy dropped at the foot of a trunk. Cadvan laughed for real now and inclined his head. His hair, free of the napkin, stuck up in unruly clumps. Dernhil bit his tongue.

“Since I’m not running off like a thief in the night without farewells,” Dernhil said, “are you fit to play together? I promise you I won’t escape while you run to fetch your lyre.”

“There’s no need, for I left my lyre outside the door,” said Cadvan, and went to get it. Dernhil saw no reason why Cadvan would not have brought his lyre in at the beginning, but let it pass. Cadvan was Cadvan, and knowing him meant accepting that he would do things that seemed nonsensical. When Cadvan returned they sang and played for a comfortable hour, trading regional variations of Dormisian and then, affected by the pensive darkening sky, coming together for an aching rendition of _The Song of Theokas_ that left them both quiet for some minutes afterward. When Cadvan shifted, striking a sharp note on his lyre, Dernhil blinked as if awaking from a dream.  
  
Even with the shutters open, the late hour made Dernhil’s rooms seem an island apart from the world, or perhaps a secret box set away and forgotten by the annals of time. They sat now in chairs by the hearth, the wine much depleted, the fire cheerful and wrapping them both in the warm closeness only a small fire on a dark night can provide.

“What is it?” Dernhil asked, leaning forward to offer Cadvan the last of the wine. Cadvan held up a hand, staying him, and Dernhil sat back perplexed. Cadvan, he knew, said things in his own time: but he had not sensed more news from his friend since Cadvan had assured Dernhil he was simply taken aback by his upcoming journey. 

Cadvan busied himself with the pegs of his lyre. He looked strangely shy, a sentiment Dernhil had seldom seen from him, and Dernhil resolved to wait him out. Whatever it was, it would do no good for him to rashly demand an explanation.

“I had thought to give this to you when I found you,” Cadvan said. His voice was rough. “And then I learned you were leaving, and I thought it ill-timed. But now that you have said I may come with you…” he raised his head, and there was the piercing gaze that Dernhil had first seen directed towards him with acrimony, but now held respect and affection in yet greater measures. “As has been justly proven, I am not the poet you are, but perhaps you will hear this all the same?”

“If you spent half the time writing that you did deriding yourself for that duel, you would surpass me quite,” said Dernhil gently. Though he enjoyed when Cadvan praised him, he misliked the way Cadvan so often tied compliment, especially of this, to his own failings—perceived or actual. “I will listen, and thank you for the honor you do me.”

“Small honor, but at least well-meant,” Cadvan said. He bent once more over his lyre and was silent. Dernhil had started to think Cadvan had changed his mind when Cadvan set his fingers to the strings and began to play.

It was not uncommon for Bards to gift each other songs. It was the craft they all shared, and for most of them daily practiced. Couplets and rhymes, too, sometime set to a tune and sometime not, were tossed between friends, families, and lovers as anything from joke to rebuke to a way of saying _good morning_ with a little bit more fun. The world, Saliman had once said, made more sense in song.

For all this, it was not a practice that Cadvan himself indulged in often since his one-time exile from Lirigon. Dernhil suspected that Cadvan’s shame and pride had made him wary of sharing his own writing again, and the experience of exile had overturned much of Cadvan’s ability to take such things for granted.Dernhil was taken aback by Cadvan’s sudden effusiveness, and saw keenly that it frightened Cadvan, more than perhaps Cadvan let himself realize. Slowly, to show Cadvan he had Dernhil’s complete attention, Dernhil leaned forward in his chair and set his own instrument to the side. The blood rushed in his ears so loudly that for a moment he couldn’t hear the music meant for him. Then the roar faded, and he focused himself on listening.

When Cadvan was finished Dernhil got up from his chair and knelt on the rug before him, taking Cadvan’s hands in his own and peering up into his face. Cadvan met his gaze squarely, so bold that Dernhil could see the effort it cost him not to look away. Dernhil could feel unshed tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, but he would not have let go of Cadvan now for the world.

“Is this what you and Nerili argued about two seasons ago?” he asked softly. He turned Cadvan’s hands over and pressed one of them to his cheek. Cadvan let out a shuddering breath.

“Yes,” Cadvan said.  His face closed. Dernhil, who knew it to be self-consciousness and not affront, was patient.  “And…and no. I am the kind of person, I think, who can love more than one person at once, in this way. When I told Neri, I said I would do nothing if she did not wish it. She said she would feel she was holding me back, and I would come to resent her, for she never would wish it. I tried to tell her I would not, but knowing how I am, is it a wonder she did not believe me?” His fingers were tense against Dernhil’s face. Dernhil drew Cadvan’s hand down to his mouth and kissed it, light as gossamer, an encouragement and a steady backing. A wave of sympathy rose in him for both Cadvan and Nerili. It was hard, when the reason for an ending was no person’s fault. 

“Do you wish this?” Dernhil asked. His heart was full inside his chest, not shining out unsubtly as with the infatuation of youth, but deep and wide as an ocean, encompassing all the things he and Cadvan had done, had faced together, had been to each other. And leaving space, in the ever-expanding shoreline and the capricious, white-frosted waves, for what they might yet be.

Cadvan moved from his chair, keeping hold of Dernhil’s hands, and knelt even as Dernhil was. “I cannot promise it will go well, my friend.”

“Can anyone?” Dernhil kissed Cadvan’s knuckles again, more firmly this time. “I have loved you for a long time. You are one of my dearest friends, and I would wish this if that wish is also yours.”

“I have many times said that Dernhil of Gent knew much of the way of the heart,” Cadvan said, and drew Dernhil’s face close to his; and smiled when Dernhil kissed him.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _The Bone Queen_ got me like “think of the bangin’ OT3 we could’ve had if SOMEBODY hadn’t DIED”
> 
> Also "young Cadvan was a bit of a different guy and gee I bet the Landrost screwed Cadvan up a WHOLE bunch in ways Maerad wouldn't have known because she didn't know him beforehand"


End file.
